The technology relates to a vehicle traveling control apparatus that recognizes a surrounding environment of a traveling own vehicle, and performs a steering control based on a lane line of a lane along which the own vehicle travels or a steering control to follow a preceding vehicle.
Various techniques utilizing a drive assist control or an automatic drive control have been developed and put into practical use, in order for a driver to drive a vehicle more comfortably. For example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication (JP-A) No. 2014-51241 discloses a technique of a vehicle control apparatus. The vehicle control apparatus disclosed in (JP-A) No. 2014-51241 detects a lane line in a captured image ahead of an own vehicle, calculates recognition confidence in the lane line, and detects a preceding vehicle traveling ahead of the own vehicle. When the preceding vehicle is detected and the recognition confidence for the lane line is lower than a predetermined value, the vehicle control apparatus moves the own vehicle to allow an inter-vehicle distance between the own vehicle and the preceding vehicle to increase, to thereby allow the recognition confidence for the lane line to be equal to or higher than the predetermined value.